Scared/Straight: Titillated & Terrified at The Armory’s Porn Dungeon

A sassy straight girl and a gay prude walk into a sex dungeon …“I’ll be your dommy mommy,” our guide says shortly before signaling us to follow her into the bowels of San Francisco’s Armory, the city’s — if not the world’s — premier military-stronghold-turned-sex-dungeon.And, like good submissives, we follow without question.For those who don’t know, “dommy,” or “dom,” is a reference to the “D” in BDSM, the ubiquitous acronym that denotes the erotic discipline — and I mean discipline in both senses of the word — involving bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism. And nothing quite embodies BDSM like the imposing Armory building in the Mission.The 200,000-square-foot building had a past life as a National Guard facility, and it became a porn dungeon and the kink capital of California after Kink.com, the brainchild of Columbia-University-finance-student-cum-porn-entrepreneur Peter Acworth (aka the Steve Jobs of kinky porn), purchased it about 10 years ago.I decided to check out a tour of this formidable space and see what sadistic acts lurked in the dark corners. But, as I imagined walking through the ominous hallways and hearing the screams of both pain and pleasure, I realized that I was more exhilarated than nervous. I thought to myself: Who cares what a sassy single gal has to say about a porn dungeon? Why not drag along someone a little more timid and make him squeal a bit? So I asked my colleague, Tor, to join me — shy, embarrassed to disrobe in locker rooms, overwhelmed by the openness of the gay community in SF, Montana-born and small-town-raised Tor. And boy, was it a good idea.We sit at the Armory bar at 5 o’clock, just an hour before the tour is set to begin. I sip a Campari soda as Tor clenches a glass of water, panic-stricken. As I point out paintings of women hog-tied and bound, Tor becomes visibly more unnerved. I am perversely enjoying his fear as I order up another drink and ease into my seat at the bar.

Why am I nervous? Perhaps it’s my Christian upbringing compounded by the fact that I’m naturally a huge prude. An anxious one, at that. For a gay guy living in the liberal Bay Area, I’m very conservative. (Side note: For the record, not all gay conservatives are trolls like Milo Yiannopoulos. Some of us — most of us, I’d say — have actual souls.) But in some ways, the idea of touring the Armory excited me. No, not like that, pervert. I live for fish-out-of-water experiences. I enjoy a certain level of forced discomfort on occasion. Kind of sadistic, right? Maybe I’d fit in at the Armory more than I’d expected.

We cross the street and enter the massive structure with security akin to something you’d find at an exclusive VIP party. Before we’re ushered into the waiting room, I take my leave of Tor to use the restroom (those Campari sodas went through me quickly). “Wait,” he stammers, his voice faltering, “I’m coming, too — I might puke.” I burst into laughter as we head toward the “his” and “hers” signs (the only ones we’ll find in the building as most of the restroom facilities are unisex). This general attitude peppers our whole experience throughout the dungeon — me, amused, and Tor, on the verge of fainting or vomiting.

Once in the waiting room, we take a cursory look around. Couples of all shapes and sizes hold hands in anticipation of the evening — then there’s us, the odd couple. Tor is white knuckling his pen in the seat next to me as I read aloud the workshop offerings and watch his pained expression with the mention of each class. “Rough Sex: Bound in Leather” — he shudders. “Dynamic Flogging” — a gasp. “Squirting, Fingerbanging & Mastering the G-Spot” — wide eyes and a whole lot of “WTF’s” (I don’t think he fully grasped the meaning of this class). “The Art of the Blowjob” — ah, finally, one we can agree on.

What lurks down these dark hallways? (The Armory)

Our tour officially begins, and it’s like Alcatraz on aphrodisiacs. As we explore the huge building from the bottom up, our guide takes us to to various rooms, each one more shocking than the next, while providing wry and engaging descriptions. Here’s a set used for electrosex, she says, before taking us to a boiler room with a furnace complete with a human-sized portal. At this point, my claustrophobia is so acute that what our guide is saying starts to become fuzzy.

The bondage wall is not for the faint of heart. (The Armory)

“This is scarier to me than a haunted house,” Tor blurts out as we enter the prop room. This isn’t like the prop rooms I’ve seen in a LA film studios. There’s a life-sized Barbie box, cages and crates (for human puppies), a dunking tank, a human-sized hamster wheel, a wagon (for frontier porn, of course), medieval torture devices, and holiday-themed accessories (there’s gotta be someone turned on by Santa, right?). Each tour is different depending on which dommy mommy (or daddy) you get as your guide — but they’re all bound to be (pun intended) as colorful as the last.

Some props are pedestrian, and others are mind-boggling. I see a device that resembles some sort of contraption that a Pilgrim might have used to churn butter. “This,” she says, “is a wooden f***ing machine. Just like grandma used to use.” I cringe at the thought.

Sci-fi nerds, rejoice. There’s a porn set for you, too. (The Armory)

The sets are themed, too. A spaceship set for the sci-fi/sex nerds, a slaughterhouse set, a Downton Abbey-style Edwardian house, a restroom that doubles as a glory hole set (you don’t want to find this out the hard way, our guide jokes), a locker room set, a jail cell set that was actually used by the National Guard for detainment. Even the Kink.com offices double as porn sets because, hey, even workaholics need porn.

By the time we reach the spacious Roman Baths, my anxiety has waned a bit, and I’m able to breathe again. I even chuckle when our guide talks about a recent politics-themed porno — “Make America Gape Again.” The tour becomes a blur of wrestling mats, steel rings, and oil-barrel-sized containers of lubrication. I breathe a sigh of relief when we reach the Drill Court. No whips. No chains. Just a vast, high-ceilinged room that resembles a basketball arena. George Lucas used the space for parts of “The Empire Strikes Back,” she tells us. Finally, a break from the sex talk. But before moving on to the next room, our guide casually points to what appears to be a sling suspended midair and explains how it is used. Spoiler alert: It’s for sex. Suddenly, “Drill Court” takes on an entirely different meaning.

As the tour winds down, we’re able to independently explore the upper portion of the building, which is used to entertain guests — and I’ll leave it to you deduce what “entertain” might mean, dear readers. By this point, I’ve calmed down and I become curious — even slightly giddy.

The upstairs plays host to very exclusive parties (The Armory).

Sure, the porn made in this unrelenting building by Kink.com isn’t your grandma’s porn (we hope not, at least). You’re not walking into a sexy Danielle Steele novel or even a 50 Shades of Grey set. This is no-holds-bar, rough-and-tumble, whips-and-chains-and-sex-machines porn. And no one here is about to apologize for it.

What they will do, however, is make it clear that this porn is all about pleasure, mutual respect, and, most important, consent. If someone is getting their nipples clamped and their gag reflex pushed to the limit, it’s because they want to. And, at the end of the day, this is just a business. One with PAs and editors, directors and actors, lighting guys and prop experts. Maybe peeking behind the curtain took away a bit of the mystique, but it also took away Tor’s inclination to vomit all over the floor, so maybe there’s something to be said for that. Will I suddenly delve down the rabbit hole of kinky porn and start visiting hardcoregangbangs.com? Probably not. But getting to see how it was done did give me an insight into the industry.

As we head for the exit, I begin to reflect on the experience. In a way, I feel a bit like Charlie visiting the the chocolate factory — if you replace the Oompa Loompas with porn stars and candy with sex. No, we didn’t end up winning some weird contest that allowed us to assume control of the Kink.com empire. And no one turned into a giant blueberry — or a giant ball gag. Although I nearly had a full-on panic attack in the process, I came out of the experience with something special: a glimpse behind the curtain — a rare and fascinating look at how our porn is made.

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